Tunisia

Human
rights groups and legislators are praising the third and final draft of Tunisia's new constitution as
one of the most liberal charters in the Arab world--and for being arrived at by
a remarkably consensual process among political parties, especially if compared
with neighboring Egypt and Libya.

Many journalists believed that media freedoms, which were virtually
nonexistent under former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, would grow after
his ouster. During the aftermath of the December 2010 uprising, an independent
press blossomed
and special commissions were set up to reform the media sector. But since the elected
government took office nine months ago, the tide has slowly reversed.

The doses of freedom that the Tunisian revolution injected
into national media have not been sufficient to revive it after decades of
systematic destruction. It is not surprising that our evaluation of media one
year after the tyrant fell reveals more negativity and pessimism.

On Sunday, the
privately owned broadcaster Hannibal TV was forced off the air for more than three
hours. The state-owned news agency Agence Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP) issued a statement
stating that an arrest warrant had been issued for the station's owner on
charges of "high treason" for an alleged "plot to destabilize national
security." The statement accused the owner of using the Hannibal broadcasts to
undermine Tunisia's stability.

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There has been a great deal written online about how much of
a positive role the Internet played in recent events in Tunisia (if you'd like
to catch up, Alex Howard's link round-up provides a good summary of the
many sides, both for and against). At CPJ, our focus is on slightly different
questions: How did the repression of the Internet hamper the ability to safely
gather news, report and analyze such events? Did that repression grow worse in
the dying days of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's government? Will it improve in the
future?

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For those who have spent countless hours exposing and combating
Tunisia's vast press freedom abuses, today is truly a glorious day. Tunisian
authorities released the ailing imprisoned journalist Fahem Boukadous,
a day after CPJ called on
the transitional government to honor its pledge to free all political
prisoners. Today, we can loudly proclaim that no journalist or blogger is
imprisoned in the government's dungeons and that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's censorship
is no longer imposed on Tunisians.

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So much has happened in Tunisia since I last blogged on the
large-scale phishing attacks against activists and journalists
in the country. With the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and a new interim government in place,
online censorship seems to be ending. Opposition media
and human rights sites are viewable, and CPJ's
Tunisia reports are
now available in the country (although it was always possible to
access them through our https service). Social networking sites such as Facebook are available without the
password-stealing code of the previous cybersecurity regime.
I've yet to hear of any site that remains blocked, although
Tunisia's filtering system was
so byzantine, it's hard to conclusively tell whether it has
been completely shut down.

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The Tunisian government has been a notorious censor for many
years, for journalists online and off. In the wake of widespread domestic
protests in December, however, the authorities appear to have turned to even more
repressive tactics to silence reporting. In the case of Internet bloggers, this
includes what seems a remarkably invasive and technically sophisticated plan to
steal passwords from the country's own citizens, in order to spy on private communications
and squelch online speech.

The news headlines in the last few weeks have been full of
stories of how DOS attacks can bring down even high-profile
websites, often with relatively little technical expertise on
behalf of the attackers. Such attacks are nothing new to online
journalists across the world, however. Just this year, CPJ has
dealt with cases of independent news sites being taken offline by
remote Internet attacks in
China,
Burma,
Vietnam,
Russia,
Kazakhstan, and now
Belarus.

The Berkman Center's report details over three hundred other
cases from 1998 onwards, from Sweden to North Korea. More important, the researchers
interviewed the victims of these attacks, and categorized what
defenses were practical and effective -- and what did not work.

If you're an online journalist with powerful opponents, I'd
strongly encourage you to read this document and pass it along to
your tech-savvy associates. Even a small amount of preparation can
help keep vital news and opinion available online when you -- and
your readers -- most need it.

December 21, 2010 3:31 PM ET

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Obviously all of these assumptions are mere speculations. This is an effort on our part to try to better understand one of the most secretive system of repression in Tunisia and to help demystify its processes. And obviously, we invite anyone with further information to make them public, and a fortiori, it may be that former collaborators of this repressive system finally reveal what can help Tunisia to get rid of this evil.

Jillian York has translated Sami Ben Gharbia and Astrubal's analysis of Tunisia's Internet censorship system. As they say, it's mostly conjectural, but based on a few hours earlier this month when parts of the censorship system were turned off. By looking at what still remained blocked, the two were able to make guesses as to how the technical infrastructure worked.